Burning From the Inside
by Kassidy62
Summary: Slash fiction; horror. Clay is broken. He's still going after Jason. Then he meets Tom Hanniger, who wants to help.


"It's kill or be killed," Clay says, enunciating clearly, as if he hasn't downed his fourth shot of tequila in fifteen minutes.

Tom is captivated. He's been captivated by Clay for weeks, riding behind him on his motorcycle, crotch against Clay's ass, legs cupping Clay's thighs. The highway rolls on beneath him, a blur of gray and white-yellow-solid-dash lines, the broad back before him hard and wide and always too hot, like whatever Clay's made of is burning away and scattering, lost to the wind. Clay drives too fast and too far, only stopping whenever he's so drunk or high he can't keep them upright any longer.

Tom's pretty sure Clay is going to get them both killed.

Tom knows about killing. He's seen a lot of it through the blood-clotted insanity that is Harry, pickaxe and mask always at the ready. Tom's watched that pickaxe judder over bones and bury itself in brains, seen it dig out entrails and organs. Harry's a tumor taking over Tom's brain, engorged with blood and oxygen, cells dividing and multiplying faster than sanity allows. D-N-fucking-A gone amok.

Tom's just there for the ride. He has no say; he's being consumed. He does, however, have a choice with Clay.

Clay's a different brand of crazy, drinking, popping pills, fucking until he can't anymore, wearing himself out, hands always with a fine tremor to them. It doesn't matter what he smokes or how many pills or how much alcohol he swallows. He still twitches at sudden noises and the color drains from his face when he hears someone move behind him. Even when he passes out, he's restless, dreaming. Sometimes screaming.

He makes Tom feel like less of a freak.

Tom is very careful to take his medicine. He doesn't hide it from Clay. Clay watches him swallow it down but never asks. Tom takes extra, trying to keep Harry from showing his face. It's working or Harry's just too entertained with Clay to interfere, at least for now.

"You can't run, can't hide. You just have to kill. There's no time," Clay says, bringing Tom back to the present. Clay's stubble curves around his jaw, glows red in the hollows of his cheeks from the neon bar lights. His cheekbones are sculpture, high and broad. He leans closer, smells like tequila and outdoors. He's a fucking mountain.

Tom's dick goes so hard so fast he's astonished at how much it hurts.

Clay whispers into Tom's ear. "Then you have to do more. Burn the body, chop it up, make fucking _sausage_ of it."

Tom laughs.

Clay's eyes go wide. "You let him get up, give him that chance, he comes back. He always comes back." His eyes water. He wipes at them impatiently. He's burning from the inside, structure about to collapse. He wants Tom to understand.

Tom tilts his head at him, gives him an affectionate look. Clay suddenly laughs with him.

"So who's he after?" Tom whispers, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath reflected off Clay. His hand roams up Clay's thigh, worn jeans soft beneath his touch. He rubs his knuckles up the seam at Clay's crotch, and Clay spreads his legs wider, gesturing to the bartender for another shot of tequila. The bartender stays where he is, studying Clay as he wipes down the bar. Tom turns to look, too. The bartender shrugs at them and walks over. He pours the drink, then another when Tom lifts a finger.

"Me and my sister. He got her. Broke her neck at the dock." Clay looks at Tom steadfastly. "I had so much I wanted to make up to her. I killed him once. It wasn't enough. I'm going back. "

"Take me with you," Tom said.

Clay watches his face. He nods. His leg muscle jumps beneath Tom's hand.

Tom leans forward and kisses him. The bartender makes a disgusted noise. Tom climbs into Clay's lap, shot glasses clattering, rolling over the bar as he dives into Clay's mouth, grinding his dick into his stomach.

They get thrown out into the parking lot. Clay's sprawled over the asphalt, hair all over his face. Tom brushes it back and they look at each other, panting. Clay rolls him over, laughing, and they thrust their hips together, perfectly in sync.

xxxx

It should have felt colder, camping out in a tent the first month of winter, but Clay's sleeping body is heavy, long arms and legs slung over Tom and throwing off heat. The sleeping bag only makes it worse. Tom struggles up, eyes puffy. He fights the confines of the sleeping bag, finally slipping from beneath Clay's arms and legs. He stands and blinks, rubbing his eyes.

The tent's littered with weapons, all within arm's length from where they'd fallen asleep after the long drive here. There's a carelessly flung bottle of liquor tipped on its side. Clay stole a Jeep to tote everything to Crystal Lake and come after Jason. He drove slow and careful, avoiding the local cops on the drive in. Clay has a history with them.

Tom thinks they might die here, though he doesn't really want to anymore. Not since Clay. But Clay can't live again until Jason's dead.

Tom picks up a gun, casually sticking it in the waistband at the back of his pants. Jason's out there somewhere, but Tom's got to piss and it can't wait. He walks down the winding path from camp beside the lake, instinctively heading away from the pillar or column or whatever it was they'd seen while looking for a place to camp. He'd hated it on sight—a rusted, ruined monolith of peeling white, barely twelve feet high, stabbing at the sky. Clay had told him it was probably a water gauge with equipment housed inside. He doesn't care, only wants not to be near it.

The sun drops low on the horizon. He walks off the trail into the dead overgrowth of winter. He stops, dried ironweed stalks all around. He pulls the gun so he can open his pants. Bundled seed heads the color of hay brush against his hip. He relieves himself, piss steaming in the air. The cold away from the tent feels good against his overheated skin. He grins when he spots a patch of marijuana in perfect, dried condition. Might have to take advantage of that.

There's no reason, no rhyme to why Harry's suddenly pushing to the forefront. He wants out. Tendrils of red smoke unfurl wherever Tom looks, bleeding over the ironweed seeds and the silvery, desiccated stalks of Queen Anne's Lace. There's tremendous pressure and heat burning inside him.

The heat reminds him of Clay, waiting for him. Alone in the tent.

Tom pushes back at Harry, willing him to step back. He can't let Harry out, not now, not with one killer already on the loose and aimed at Clay. Tom's head wobbles, feels too weighty to hold. The part of him that Harry claims swells and thickens, needing more room.

He doesn't give it any.

Sweat pops out on his forehead and upper lip. Tom's head feels larger, like rotten meat swollen with gases, bloody and disintegrating. It doesn't matter. He won't give way.

Finally Harry stops pushing. Tom feels the sullen retreat. It leaves his head pulsing sickly.

A crow calls from overhead, black wings wide against the sky. Tom tenses all over again. "Yeah, yeah," he mutters. He zips up, hurrying back to Clay.

Before he gets inside the tent and sees the long slash down the back of it, Tom knows. There's an emptiness around him, a howling wind against his soul.

Clay's gone. The sleeping bag is flung in the corner, torn and with stuffing sticking out, and there's a gun thrown aside. Tom rips out of the tent, frantic, calling Clay's name and running down the path toward the waterline and the tower with the water gauge. He runs to it because he's afraid of it, old and peeling, white and crevassed, door with coppery brown rust, black and green mold growing over the sides. He and Harry dreamt of it last night. It repelled Tom and attracted Harry.

Clay's where Tom knew he would be, graceful and pale in the lowering light, naked, spread out and strung up with rope over the brackets jutting out from the tower. There's a scrawling purple bruise covering Clay's ribs and more on his arms and legs. His head hangs limp, face hidden from Tom by his long hair.

Harry descends over Tom again, trying to push him aside. Tom feels the pressure of him, a malignant tumor pulsing with blood and willpower, feels the redness sidle up close against the back of his eyes.

"What are you doing, Harry," he whispers furiously, falling to his knees before the endless beat of Harry's will. And he feels—hears—something else_. _A thought, a whisper._ It wasn't me that did this. Let me out or we'll die. _

Tom clings to sanity, though the lake laps at the shore with red waves and the trees are covered in red mist. He shrugs inwardly at Harry. _Same old death threat_, he says, and feels Harry's rage in return.

Harry pushes once more, voicing a final, triumphant effort. _Clay will die. _

Tom looks up at Clay, not meaning to do it, and has a vision of Clay's head cleaved in two. Blood obscures his face, runs down his chest and over his crumpled, dead body.

Harry grins savagely. Knows he's won.

"Clay," Tom says, despairing, the name a prayer on his lips. "Don't hurt him."

Clay hears and looks up, dazed, skin white as a winter sky, dark bruise by his mouth. There's blood on his chin. Tom sees him take a minute to recognize him, standing below. The relief and hope on Clay's face drives the black tip of Harry's axe into Tom's chest.

Tom lets Harry out. Harry's the survivor, not him, and they've made a bargain. Harry nods and strides away. Tom hears Clay calling out. He's ashamed because Harry's left Clay tied up and helpless.

Harry gets to the tent and enters it again, grabs Tom's jacket and shrugs it on. He arms himself to the teeth. Guns and wickedly sharp knives, shoved inside his jacket.

Harry picks up the last one reverently. His pickaxe. Then he jogs back to the lake, Tom's head pounding in time with the thud of his footsteps.

Clay's out of it again, sagging limply against the ropes when Harry gets back. Harry is pleased by the perpendicular lines of long torso and legs meeting up with the defenseless line of the arms. Likes the grace and agony and utter defeat of crucifixion.

He drops his pickaxe at the base of the tower and curls his hands over Clay's ankles, rubbing at the knobs of bone. Clay's skin is cold.

"Tom? Help me," Clay says. His voice runs up and down the scale over the few words, uneven and strained. Harry smooths his hands over Clay's calves, feels the bunch of muscle as Clay tries to move.

"It's Jason. He tied me up. You have to hurry."

Harry licks at Clay's calf. He's amused when Clay jerks against his mouth. He tries to make his voice sound like Tom. "How am I gonna do that? I can't reach your arms." He bites into the meat of Clay's calf, soft hair and skin giving beneath the pressure of teeth. Clay doesn't even flinch.

"Climb up the brackets." Clay's voice falters. Tom knows why. It's because Clay knows something's wrong, because Tom would already be climbing up to him.

Harry bares his teeth up at Clay. It's meant to be a smile. He hefts himself up on the first bracket. Harry holds on with one hand, rubs Clay's thigh with the other. Harry's incredibly strong. He climbs another foothold up.

"Tom?" Clay says, low and questioning.

Harry stops at Clay's midsection. He ducks his head, burrowing his face into Clay's crotch. He mouths at Clay's balls, hard and tight and drawn from the cold. He sucks one in, rolls it until it's warm, then lets it slip out slowly. Clay's thighs shake against Harry's body.

He sucks Clay's cock into his mouth. It's cold, too, at first. Harry works on warming it, licking and sucking, the sounds loud in the silence. A crow sits in a nearby tree, cawing disapprovingly at them.

"What the fuck are you doing?" The muscles all over Clay's body are tensed, steel girders against Harry, incapable of give.

"Sharing body heat," Harry says, and bites at Clay's cock, pinching thin skin between his teeth.

Clay's body stiffens even more. His cock goes hard in Harry's mouth, and Harry grins around the swelling girth of it.

Clay surprises Harry. He looks down at him and laughs. Blood drips off his chin. His lip is cut open, his eyes utterly wild. "Jason put me up here to draw you in. You're going to die with my dick in your mouth, you know that?"

Harry ignores him, sliding his mouth up and down the shaft, moaning when he feels the vein on the underside throb thickly. He tongues around the flushed, swollen head, getting it nice and sloppy, shining and wet.

Harry reaches up, fingers crawling up Clay's chest, feeling for a nipple. It's cold and pebbled and too stiff to feel like skin. He pinches it brutally.

Clay moans, his cock pulsing in response. Harry gulps him down, getting it all inside him, wanting to feel the throb against his tongue again. Clay howls up at the sky like he does when he's high and wrecked, out of control and about to come. His body bows out from the tower, a study in etched muscle. His wrists are bleeding.

Harry slides his hand over Clay's ass and thrusts a cold finger at his tight hole, feeling the dryness, the resistance. Clay tightens up, but Harry pushes harder. He knows Clay's warm inside. He grunts around Clay's cock, mouth stretched wide and grasping, sucking greedily. He swallows, throat closing hard against Clay, can tell that Clay feels it when he shivers, ass muscles clenching tight. He jacks his finger in and out of Clay's ass, then again, further in each time, finding and relishing the burning heat that's too much, that Clay can't afford to sustain. It'd have killed him eventually. But Harry got to him first.

Clay's cock grows larger in his mouth, tightens and releases in hard, rolling spasms. Come shoots down Harry's throat. It feels boiling hot, dredged from deep inside where the cold of winter can't touch. Harry imagines Clay's blood slicking down his throat, swallowing again and again until nothing's left. He laps at Clay's dick until Clay squirms and tries to pull away.

Harry's mouth is swollen and hot. He lets go of Clay, making a wet plopping sound. Harry rubs his lips.

Clay makes some sound, laugh or sob, Harry can't tell, but it gets his attention.

"He's here," Clay says, trembling, tight as a wire.

Harry blinks, sees a figure down the trail, a silhouette as black as the branches crossing the path. He's huge, broad-shouldered. He carries a long knife, resting easily at his side as he strides closer. Harry climbs down and grabs his pickaxe, moving fast to meet it.

The figure is as large as he'd estimated, taller even than Clay, wearing a faded jacket and jeans. He wears a beat up hockey mask, dirt ground into the numerous scratches over the surface, an inverted red triangle at the forehead.

Harry pulls a gun from the back of Tom's jeans as the figure in front of him raises the machete to fling it, horribly quick. Harry aims and shoots.

Jason staggers, his arm falling back, the grip of the machete still held tightly in his fist. He doesn't fall. After a moment he moves forward again. Harry keeps shooting until there's no more bullets, throwing the gun to the ground as Jason advances closer.

Tom feels the quick pounding of Harry's heart and stifles an insane burst of laughter. They've never seen anyone like this.

Harry raises the pickaxe and slings it outward, a long sweeping arc toward Jason just as Jason swings the machete. Metal rings on metal, sparks flying. The pickaxe is much heavier, knocking the machete off course. It scrapes a hole in Harry's jacket, nothing more, before falling to the ground.

Harry hefts the pickaxe and buries it in Jason's thick, powerful neck. Arterial blood sprays darkly across the dead dry grasses and over the dirt of the winding lake trail.

Jason falls to his knees. Harry bears down, pushing the point in deeper, wishing for his mask. He only ever feels truly free behind it.

Jason stares up at him with round, fathomless eyes. Harry pulls the hockey mask off him, struggling for a moment to pull the strap from the long, tangled hair. He yanks the hair to angle Jason's face up to look at him, grimacing at the deformed, defenseless features.

Harry searches for fear, waits for pleas, but Jason doesn't speak. He only watches. He raises a hand to the pickaxe as if to pull it out. Harry drives it harder into his neck, bringing his weight to bear on it.

Jason falls face forward to the ground.

"Don't stop," Clay shouts, his voice hoarse. "Chop him up and burn him. Do it quick."

Tom hears him. Clay sounds mad as a hatter, and Tom doesn't care. He wants him.

He pushes at Harry. Harry steps back a moment, surprised. He looks at the looping gouts of blood on the ground. He's full of dark glee. It drives Tom into a corner in his own mind, squeezed tight. He steps out with trembling legs, pushing again at the swollen tumor that is Harry, until he's drowning in the bloat and wet sickness all around him. He gasps, keeps up the pressure.

_Clay_, he thinks, his new prayer, and pushes harder. He feels himself fading out. The thing he pushes against explodes, blood everywhere, in his mouth and eyes so that he can't see.

Harry disappears. Tom's eyes squeeze shut and then open again, seeing Clay above him, arms stretched out in sacrifice. Harry loved the sight of him hanging there, but Tom hates it. Hates that Harry touched him and left him there to suffer.

He can't move yet. He's not sure if he's won, if he's killed Harry. He's pretty sure he's not that lucky. It's not that simple. But there's something new expanding inside him, over the space where Harry lives.

Tom straightens, starting toward Clay.

"Not yet," Clay says, trying for enough volume to be heard despite the breaks in his voice. "Finish him first."

Tom nods. He picks up Harry's axe and raises it high. He puts Harry's power behind the blows, sinking into memories of slick blood and glistening flesh. Harry still doesn't surface. Meat and gristle and blood splatter the ground. Tom stomps over the body in frenzied revulsion, panting, hearing Clay still urge him on. The hockey mask cracks in two, sinking into the wet red mess beneath his feet.

He pours lighter fluid over the remains, steps back and pulls a lighter from his pocket. Lights it and drops it. Jason burns. The stench of unwashed hide and sickly sweet meat rises on the breeze.

Tom climbs up to Clay and cuts him loose. He helps him down. Clay's swollen at the joints. He's gone numb, but the blood flow starts again shortly. It's agony. Clay bites his lip, eyes tearing. He doesn't care that it hurts. He insists they stand over the body and watch it burn. He leans against Tom, his eyes alert but dull. He won't take Tom's jacket, though his skin is pebbled with goose bumps. Tom rubs his skin to try and warm him.

In the end, Tom has to pull some of the dried weeds and fallen branches from around the path and throw them on top of the blackened, smoky mess to keep it burning. He pulls some dried pot and waves it in front of Clay's face, then throws it into the fire. Clay gives him the ghost of a smile, breathing deeply.

Tom keeps poking at the place where Harry resides in his mind. He can't find him. He fights off the rising hope, afraid of it.

Clay still won't move from the spot. The last of the flames flicker gold over his face when Tom finally leans over and kisses him. When Clay lets him he continues, keeping the pressure of his lips light, deepening the kiss only when Clay asks for more.

Clay grabs him, pulling at his jeans. They roll on the ground into the still smoking fire. Clay doesn't react to the heat, but then, he always runs hot. _Or he's plain crazy,_ Tom thought affectionately. _Take your pick._

Tom nudges him gently out of the smoking circle, but they roll back in once or twice, heads thrown back, sweaty and straining, thrusting their dicks together in Clay's tight, huge fist.

Once Clay reaches into the burn circle with his free hand, scoops up ash and smears it everywhere between them. It should be disgusting, is, but Tom thinks he gets it. It's Clay stomping over the body same as Tom did, proving to himself that Jason can't hurt anyone else.

Tom doesn't mention that the stuff he's smearing around isn't all strictly ash. Clay's crazy, but he knows. Tom loves him anyway. Tom knows all about crazy.

Afterward they brave a quick, freezing dunk in the dark water. They hold onto each other because it's still fucking Crystal Lake. They pack up their tent in the middle of the night and move on, though they're exhausted. Tom wants to get away from the fucked-up monolith. Clay never wants near this lake again, now that business is taken care of.

Tom takes a last look at the burn site before they leave. Maybe the wind stirs the ashes, kicking them into a swirl, or maybe something's moving inside the circle. Writhing. Hard to tell by the light of a flashlight.

The back of Tom's neck prickles. He backs away and heads to the Jeep before Clay comes after him. He doesn't say anything about it because he's crazy, too, and knows it. There's nothing left to do, either way.

By sunrise, they've been driving a couple of hours. The Jeep's noisy, not good at taking the hilly terrain. Clay's driving, hair blowing over his face as he looks at Tom in the clear, dawning light.

He takes a deep breath, hesitant. "When I was tied up—that wasn't you, Tom. Was it?"

Tom stares out at the sky. He can't answer. Clay knows it wasn't him, and Tom doesn't want to lie.

Clay looks away and fumbles in the seat for sunglasses, though he doesn't need them yet. He won't press Tom. He never does. It helps Tom keep sane.

It's enough for now. Tom will tell him everything if it turns out Harry's under control. If he's not, Tom will run. It will kill him, but he'll run.

He'll do anything to keep Clay safe.


End file.
